State Secretary Bence Rétvári said Hungary is being punished to force it “to toe the line and let migrants in”.
Rétvári said Hungary will continue to protect the EU’s external borders, adding that the country “does not accept” the European Court of Justice ruling against Hungary for actions taken against migration. “The ruling is clearly not a legal decision but the exertion of political pressure,” he said. “They imposed a record fine seventy times the amount originally requested in the petition, to force Hungary to let illegal migrants into the country and to toe the line of [those countries] which voted for the migration pact, which means the automatic acceptance and resettlement of illegal migrants.” “Hungary will not budge”, however, no matter the pressure, and will stick to its stance on the protection of the southern border, too, Rétvári said, calling the fine “entirely illegitimate and unfounded” and vowing that Hungary “will not pay it”. He said migration posed an “unprecedented” threat to European public safety, adding that it was being organised “by the same circles that earlier profited hugely from drug and arms trafficking, and prostitution”. He said people smuggling was even more lucrative, adding that in Sweden “a knife-attack or explosion takes place every second day, organised by criminal gangs which are now getting most of their money and new recruits thanks to illegal migration,” Rétvári said some 2,000 people had fallen victim to terrorism in Europe in the past decade. “It is nonsense that Hungary is being penalised for protecting their security.” He called the 80 billion forint (EUR 200m) fine — with a further 400 million (EUR 1m) forints to be paid for every day of non-compliance — “racketeering”. “Brussels wants to strip member states of their ability to protect themselves,” he said. Hungary should be reimbursed, not punished, for the wages of police deployed at the border and for building the fence which “protects our southern border, the external border of the union”. He said “Brussels bureaucrats” expected police to help migrants, “who arrive in large groups, often armed with knives”, to submit their asylum requests “instead of protecting the border”. Hungary “will not support migration or enter the ranks of pro-war countries”, he said. Hungarians “have expressed their will for illegal migration to be stopped at the southern border”, he added. Since 2015, the country had shown that the border could be protected and migration stopped, he said. Hungarian police “are working effectively at Serbia’s southern border, too, alongside Austrian officers,” he said. Meanwhile, many Western European politicians, he said, saw migration as a “logistical problem”. This attitude, he added, put the decision as to who and how many enter Europe into the hands of people smugglers. Rétvári said the new arrivals sent the subsidies received to their home country to support others in coming to Europe. “Western European subsidies thus land in the pockets of people smugglers… That’s how public safety deteriorates year after year in European metropolises,” he said.